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Sultana Caramels
2 cups sugar 2 squares chocolate 1/2 cup milk 1 teaspoon vanilla 1/4 cup molasses 1/2 cup English walnut or hickory nut meat, cut in pieces 1/4 cup butter 2 tablespoons Sultana raisins Put butter into a saucepan; when melted, add sugar, milk, and molasses. Heat to boiling-point, and boil seven minutes. Add chocolate, and stir until chocolate is melted; then boil seven minutes longer. Remove from fire, beat until creamy, add nuts, raisins, and vanilla, and pour at once into a buttered tin. Cool slightly, and mark in squares. The nut meats and raisins may be omitted.
A chocolate caramel of the beaten, fudge-like type rather than the chewy modern kind. The two boiling stages and the beating at the end are what set its texture, and a thermometer removes all the guesswork.
- Squares of chocolateA square means one ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate, so use 2 oz. Semisweet or chips will make the finished candy noticeably sweeter and softer.
- Sultana raisinsSultanas are sold in the US as golden raisins. Two tablespoons is a small amount by design; ordinary dark raisins work equally well.
- MolassesUse unsulphured molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and will dominate the chocolate.
- Watch temperature, not the clockFourteen minutes of boiling in total is only a rough guide, since it depends on your pan and burner. Cook to 245-250F (firm-ball stage) for a candy that holds a cut square; below about 240F it will stay too soft to mark.
- Add the chocolate off the heat firstAdding the chocolate -- The recipe does not say whether to take the pan off the fire at this point. Pulling it aside while the chocolate melts helps keep it from scorching on the bottom; then return it to the boil for the second stage.
- The beating is the hingeLet the syrup cool for a few minutes before beating, then beat only until it thickens and loses its gloss. Beating a still-boiling-hot syrup, or beating too long, gives a grainy candy instead of a creamy one.
- Pan and markingAn 8-inch square pan, buttered, gives a good depth. Score the squares while the sheet is warm and still yielding; once fully set it will crack rather than cut.
- YieldSomething over a pound of candy, enough to fill an 8-inch pan; cut small, several dozen squares. Store airtight between layers of waxed paper.
Sultanas take their name from the same Turkish word as sultan; the pale seedless grapes were dried around Smyrna and shipped west in quantity through the later nineteenth century, which is why an American household book of this period could call for two tablespoons of them without comment. The recipe itself belongs to the great age of home candy-making, when falling sugar prices and cheap manufactured baking chocolate put confectionery that had once been a professional's work within reach of any cook with a saucepan. Caramels of this beaten sort sit halfway between fudge and the chewy commercial caramel, and making them depended on reading a boiled sugar syrup by eye before the kitchen thermometer became a standard tool.